


my silent fears have gripped me

by SafelyCapricious



Series: i put a spell on you [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, Magical Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6510937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the morning of the day he agreed to meet her friends and Grant is brushing his teeth when he tastes allspice in the back of his throat.</p><p> </p><p>The Modern-Magic AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	my silent fears have gripped me

**Author's Note:**

> This is for a prompt from tumblr, but even though it's not a twist or anything I think it works best if ya'll don't know what the prompt was. So it'll be in the end notes. 
> 
> The speediness of this was due in large part to all of you being awesome. Your comments on the last part were all so sweet that it kept me in the modern-magic headspace and thinking about it. So this is dedicated to everyone who commented and was excited. _Thank you._

It’s the morning of the day he agreed to meet her friends and Grant is brushing his teeth when he tastes allspice in the back of his throat.

 He’s not entirely awake yet, he hadn’t bothered to try to sleep until a few hours before and the three hours or so of restless sleep he did manage have left him more tired than he was before, so it takes him a moment longer than it should to realize. As soon as he does he’s rinsing his mouth and rushing from his bathroom to his front door to make sure she’s fine.

 Of course she’s fine.

His barrier is still clinging to her – which, on one hand, he’s deeply pleased about, but on the other it indicates that even though it’s been near a week she still must be shaken from the shooting.

 That he doesn’t like.

 She blinks at him, hand poised to knock and stares. Her gaze dips down and then fixes back on his face – despite how much he’s sure his dragon is preening across his bare chest.

 “Jemma,” he says, smiling and relishing the sight of her on his porch, “hello.”

“Ah, um. Good morning, Ward.” She lowers her hand slowly and shifts to curl her fingers around the strap of her purse.

“You could call me Grant, you know.” He tries to keep most of the heat he feels out of his voice, but she still shivers and grips the bag tighter.

She wrinkles her nose and twists her lips but doesn’t take her eyes off his face. “Yes. I could.”

His lips twitch and he steps to the side to let her inside. It’s only when she hesitates that he realizes maybe he miscalculated – she’s only been on his property once, never so much as on his porch and he’s been told that the power that has sunk into the very foundation can be uncomfortable for some. He opens his mouth to direct her to the chairs on the porch – he can move them to the yard if that will help – when she steps in.

He falls back another step to let her pass and then moves to shut the door. He watches as she glances around. He wonders what she’s seeing, but he can’t take his eyes off of her to see what, specifically, is catching her attention in his sparsely decorated entrance way.

She’s in his house. He can't taste her magic at all, anymore, not here where his own lies so thick. 

He wonders how long it would take until it was as much her magic as his, in the air, in the very soul of the place.

He’d seen so much of her in the Magic Shop when he’d been there. Does she see him, here? Does she know him well enough to see him - does she want to see him in it? Most importantly, does she like it – is it somewhere she could be comfortable?

He’ll tear it down if it’s not, stone by stone, but most of the deep wards took him years to cement into place and so he’s hoping it is.

It’ll be easier to keep her safe if it is.

He has to take another step back, physically, because he doesn’t want to scare her and he’s honestly not sure how many of his thoughts are showing on his face.

Luckily she’s still looking around and so he stays silent, forcing himself to remember the reality of the situation as he watches the tension in her shoulders finally ease. Once he’s sure his expression is neutral, or as neutral as it can get with her here, with him, he steps forward again and gestures down the hall. “I was about to have breakfast. Will you join me?”

“Oh!” she says, tucking her hair behind an ear and fidgeting. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d just –“ she cuts herself off, shakes her head and doesn’t look at him for a moment. “I can come back –“

“Stay,” he says, while stepping to the side so she has a clear path to the door. When she doesn’t immediately leave he adds, “Whatever brought you here must have been important. Stay.”

She lets out a breath, glances at him, frowns slightly and then nods. She gestures down the hall, a question, and he nods, following her as she walks through his house like she belongs here.

(She does belong here.)

He can’t remember, suddenly, if he cleaned the dishes from the night before and he feels a brief moment of panic before he steps in behind her and sees that he did. The kitchen is tidy; the lightning cracks on the floor and across the counter are still obvious, but as he glances at them he decides she’ll probably assume it’s decorative.

 That’s good. He doesn’t want her to look at his home and see destruction.

 “I have juice, water, milk, tea, or coffee,” he offers, once she’s chosen a seat at the island in the center of room.

 “Tea, please.” She loops her purse, after a brief hesitation, over the back of her chair and he has to stop to grin at her back for a moment before forcing himself into motion, placing water on to boil and gathering what he’ll need to make her tea.

The silence is comfortable and his dragon flies in circles around his torso in excitement as he fixes a spiced black tea for her.

 “I’d like to meet them,” she says, after he’s placed her tea in front of her and is taking a seat at her side. “Your family,” she specifies before he can ask.

 The glass of water in his hand shatters – the water evaporating before it even hits the table in a hiss of steam. “No,” he says, voice level.

 “Why not?” Her voice doesn’t even tremble and when he turns his head she meets his eyes over the edge of her mug as she takes a small sip.

 “If you think I’m giving Christian another opportunity to –“ he cuts himself off abruptly, standing and going to his fridge to gather sausage and eggs.

 Breakfast. He needs breakfast.

“Another?” her voice is soft and even without looking at her he knows she’s putting it together. He winces and doesn’t turn. “The kidnapping,” she says when he’s breaking eggs into the pan. “The shooting.” He grits his teeth and decides, abruptly, that his eggs are going to have to be scrambled. “He sent them to…hurt… _me_?”

He breathes out sharply but forces himself to remain still. His dragon stays on his chest, motionless now, he’s not going to reveal anything else to her even accidentally – he didn’t want her to know this. She was scared enough without – he viciously starts to scramble the eggs, every muscle tense.

“ _Grant_ ,” she says and he puts the pan down and turns around to meet her eyes.

They’re wide and she’s shocked and scared again and it doesn’t matter that it’s not at him – he feels a stab of panic in his gut and is around the table and kneeling at her feet in an instant.

“I will _never_ let him hurt you.”

Her lower lip trembles before she bites down on it. “But…why? Why would he – I’ve never even met him?” She sounds small and lost and if he hadn’t already come to the conclusion that he can’t protect her without Christian’s power than he’d be dead already. Dead a thousand times for putting that waver in her voice.

“He can’t physically harm me,” he says, voice soft as he rests his hands on the arms of her chair, “but he wants to hurt me for doing to him what he was too weak to do to me.” He leans forward, eyes fixed on hers. “He knows that you’re my weakness.”

Her chin trembles and her eyes close and his dragon is thrashing against his chest and he doesn’t know what to do. He feels vulnerable, exposed.

Scared.

She should tell him to leave her alone – he’s the reason she’s in danger at all and she should hate him for it.

Grant tries to convince himself to get up, to let her go but he can’t. He’s not even touching her and he can’t.

Finally, eyes still shut, she speaks. “The binding, the one you told us about before, do you have the spell?”

“Yeah,” he says, voice sounding rough to his own ears. He stays where he is for another moment, magic pulled tight within him so he doesn’t do something – anything to make her look at him. He wants her to look at him.

She doesn’t. 

“Can I see it?”

“Yeah, yes – of course.” He gets up slowly and she stays very still. He stares at her for another long moment, squeezing his eyes shut tight to imprint the image of her here, with him, before forcing himself to move.

He’s not expecting her to still be there when he gets back, but she’s still at his table. Her eyes are open now, but fixed down as she sips at her tea.

He moves slowly, pulling his magic back every time it reaches for her. He places the open book by her elbow and silently goes back to cooking.

 

***

 

It’s an old book, seeped in preservation spells and so drenched in magic that it makes all the hair on her arms stand up when she brushes her fingers over the page. Similar to how she'd felt first stepping foot on the porch.

It’s a good distraction and she lays her palm against the page until her magic acclimates to the buzz and it just feels like a book in her hands again. It’s open to the spell – ‘Alliance Binding’ is written in beautiful calligraphy across the top of the page and it takes her a moment to realize that some of the magic buzzing over the book is a translation spell.

Her fingers trace where her brain insists the ink is and she wonders if it’s translating from a foreign language – Russian and Celtic had both been popular with the old families for a long time, even those that weren’t either – or from a code, gibberish without the spell.

Her fingernail finds the edge of the page and she lifts it up, just enough to see the spell on the next page has also been translated, and when she checks several following that as well.

He spelled the whole book.

She has no doubt it’s an old family heirloom, spells for the family _by_ the family, handed down and jealously guarded and he handed the entire thing to her, translated.

Her eyes dart up to where Ward’s at the stove, the tense line of his back and the jerkiness of his motions while he makes eggs and bacon, or maybe sausage, she’s not sure – some kind of meat. She takes a deep breath and forces her hands to stop shaking, carefully wrapping her fingers around the still warm mug and bringing it to her lips.

Jemma’s not sure what it is. She’d meant to ask, earlier, after her first sip but now it seems like such an inconsequential question. Especially after…

She takes another sip of the tea and tries to identify it. It’s a black, she’s fairly sure – but there’s a smoky, spicy undertone to it that she can’t place. It could be harsh, she thinks, but it’s got just the right amount of cream – and she can tell it’s cream and not milk from the richness – and sugar.

Not even Fitz can manage to get her tea right, despite being practically raised together. He claims that what she wants from her tea changes randomly and she cannot deny it. Some days she wants it strong and black and over steeped, others more milk than water, others like this – today this is the perfect tea for her and she didn’t even know it was what she wanted until it was in her hands.

She lets out a quiet breath and places the mug carefully off to the side as she turns back to the spell in front of her.

She should focus, read the spell and decide.

Decide, before the others get a look at it and try to tell her what they think, how she feels about it. If she’s willing.

She lets out a deep breath and can see Ward twitch, head turning slightly to look at her but then he’s jerking back to his cooking and she forces herself not to think about what he said. About how…how frightened he’d looked for a moment and – that isn’t the decision she’s making. Not now, not yet. Not _today_.

Jemma traces the words of the spell, rolling them around her mouth without giving them any power.

It’s very straightforward, simple. It would bind two individuals' power together, not giving either side power that wasn't theirs but making it impossible to hurt the other side or anyone blood related on either side. (That's easy enough to get around, if they change that word it can be for anyone Jemma or Ward care about, emotionally, instead of blood relations.)

She can see the places that spell could be twisted though, for either side. Using mountain heather there instead of sage, saying this instead of that, removing that single ‘it’ right there. You could end up giving part of your power up or taking theirs, leaving your blood relations vulnerable to theirs or vice versa.

But it’s all in the set-up, before the binding itself takes hold.

She can imagine two families, each in charge of their section of the set-up trying to tilt it in their favor without being obvious about it, hoping it’s enough to take the other side and knowing they have just as much a chance of failure as success but the possibility of winning making it worth it.

Those involved in the binding can’t help with the set-up – they’d taint it. Which would mean…Which would mean that Ward would be leaving it in the hands of her friends. She doesn't think he has anyone else - anyone he would trust to work on his behalf and that...

Her heartbeat is loud in her ears and she jerks when the scrape of a plate comes – Ward is sliding what he’s made, half of it at least, in front of her. It’s scrambled eggs and sausage and scones with cream and jam and it reminds her so sharply of home that her throat goes tight as she meets his eyes.

His jaw is clenched still and she can see a fine tremble in his frame, his dragon holding terribly still on his shoulder and watching her, but his eyes are soft. Soft and scared and it’s hard to remember that he is a forest fire and she’s a tea light.

She’s decided.

“Will you…” she starts, hesitating over her words when he inhales, sharply. She wets her lips and tries again, her kitten kneading encouragement into her back. “Can I kiss you?”

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt from ilosttrackofthings over on tumblr: “Can I kiss you?” biospecialist
> 
> My writing tumblr can be found [here](http://capriciouswrites.tumblr.com/)! Come say hi and give me a prompt.


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